JOIN USLeT asked terrorist to foment trouble: NIA
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) asked a terror suspect to mingle with people protesting the killing of Hizb commander Burhan Wani, and throw grenades at security forces to “further fuel” the agitation in Kashmir, an NIA charge sheet said on Friday.
Filing its charge sheet against Bahadur Ali in connection with the conspiracy to launch terror strikes in Delhi and other places, the NIA said the proscribed outfit has a well-organised machinery to recruit vulnerable Pakistani youth to wage war against India with the "help of network of their supporters and facilitators".
Ali was arrested on July 25, almost a month after he infiltrated into India along with two other operatives Abu Saad and Abu Darda who were killed in June. He is charged with having membership of a terrorist organisation, conspiracy to commit terrorist act, possession of prohibited fire arms and explosives and possession of counterfeit currency.
"The pocket diary recovered from Bahadur Ali, among other things, contains the name of several towns in Kashmir — Rafiabad, Kunzar, Tangmarg, Budgam, Poonch, Jammu, Udhampur etc, besides Delhi. Given the fact that Ali is a trained cadre of LeT, the inclusion of the names of these towns/cities in the diary indicates that Ali was tasked with carrying out terror attacks at several places, including Delhi," it said.
Following protests in Kashmir over Wani’s killing, PoK-based LeT control station Alfa-3 told Ali that LeT cadres were "successful in fuelling large scale agitation" in the Valley.
The Alfa-3 then instructed Ali, who is a Class IV dropout, to "mix with the protestors and throw grenades at the security forces in order to further fuel the agitation in the Kashmir Valley", according to the 50-page charge sheet.
Ali and two others had crossed over to India from Mandakuli terror launch pad and walked for about seven days to reach Handwara in Kashmir. From there, they contacted their PoK handler "Walid bhai". According to the chargesheet, data retrieved from GPS device contained the coordinates of the LeT’s Mandakuli ‘launching pad.
On June 22, Darda and Saad went to Wadar village and sometime later, Ali heard gunshots and fled. The handler later told him to continue his journey and reach Yahama.
On July 24, he was asked to receive a group of terrorists but the next day he was caught by the security forces. The items confiscated from Ali include a compass, an ICOM wireless set, a matrix sheet containing codes, two unicode sheets, coded text, Rs 23,000 cash (in which three were fake), a GPS set and one map sheet.
Ali provided information that led to an encounter with the terrorists from across the border in which four of them were killed.